When App-V 5 was initially released there was new method introduced for automatically “sucking” any locally installed application into context of virtual package, RunVirtual client registry key. This method was then improved in App-V 5.0 SP3 to support user published packages in addition to global ones. One thing, however, that is difficult with this method is the fact it has to be written to client’s registry and thus is not easily manageable.

Fortunately, there seems to be workaround that works well: for both logically tying the RunVirtual entry to the CG rather than some specific package, as well as making sure that we can upgrade App-V 5 packages without constantly going back to all clients making modifications to the HKLM branch of the registry.

One of the support cases that we have had, since the release of Application Virtualization Explorer version 3.0 that started supporting App-V 5.0 packages, is how to run AVE itself inside 5.0 package. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it: just add the files into .APPV file and go, right? Well, not so in this case…

As some of you may remember, we used to have a product called Virtualization Encoder available a few years back. The idea of that product was running scripted – or template-based – automated operations against App-V packages, without user intervention. Now, that feature is sort of back in AVE!

Like mentioned in the Lib-V release announcement a week ago, it has taken us time to come with 5.0 SP2 support in our products. But now we are happy to tell you that also our premier App-V package editor/viewer, Application Virtualization Explorer, has reached a new major 4.0 release that includes the long-awaited SP2 support.

Yes, it has taken a while but we are happy to announce that our premier App-V package SDK, Gridmetric Lib-V, has just been updated to new 6.0 release. This release adds full support for App-V 5.0 SP2 packages and yes, also changes in newest Hotfix 4.

After looking around MSDN subscriber downloads for App-V downloads, I noticed that something new had been posted there just yesterday… and it looks like App-V 5.0 RTM is out now (as part of MDOP 2012 package)!

For a long time already, Application Virtualization Explorer (AVE) has had the ability to set and edit virtualized environment variables per application basis (like you could do in the Sequencer by using that cumbersome OSD -tab), but in the recently released 2.4.0 version we decided to add support for editing variables at the package level too.